Via Ferrata Brigata Tridentina
There’s a sure-fire way to enhance the excitement of travelling to, and arriving at, a new location, and that’s to do so in the dark. If that location is mountainous, so much the better. The switchback roads seem steeper and more tortuous, and you just know that somewhere out there in the blackness, great peaks are rising directly above the road to uncertain heights. Of course, the denouement comes with exiting the tent the following morning. Where previously the extent of the surroundings was limited to the surrounding tents and the toilet block (and perhaps some mysterious lights in the sky marking impossibly positioned alpine huts), the world now expands to show that your tent is hemmed in by soaring spires of rock, with a ceiling of clear blue sky. At least, that was the case if you were camped at “Camping Colfosco” in the heart of the Italian Dolomites, on Sunday 16th July this year.
One of those soaring spires marks the culmination of the Via Ferrata Brigata Tridentina, though I didn’t know it at the time. Everything surrounding the campsite looked utterly impossible to someone always happier to bimble along Derwent Edge whilst ignoring the gratuitous gymnastics of one's companions on the various pineapples sprinkled along the route.
Later on during that first day, having completed a couple of relatively easy Via Ferrate, Rupert gesticulated towards the opposite side of the valley (the Sella Massif), trying to locate a mid-grade Via Ferrata route – the Tridentina – that he’d completed a few years previously. I assumed that Rupert was mistaken – surely anything up this near-vertical wall wasn’t going to be mid-grade – and returned to photographing a stunning Alpine Lily that was growing near the path.
The next day found a group of us in a local restaurant – attacking pizzas the size of dustbin lids – tired and happy after a day climbing Piz Boe, the highest peak in the Sella Massif. The main Via Ferrata of the day had seemed quite hard to me, but was still only a Grade 2 (the grades running from 1 at the easiest to 5 at the hardest). The talk then turned to what we were going to do next and quickly settled on the “Tridentina”. This venerable route has been around for many decades, and is a very popular trip from Corvara. With 2000 feet of ascent, almost all of it protected Via Ferrata climbing, this was a chance to get into situations otherwise reserved for competent climbers. As I have not the slightest intention of ever becoming a competent climber myself [not with hundreds of lifetimes’ worth of long-distance trekking routes and coastline left to explore] this was an opportunity too good to miss.
The only real downside to this high-quality route is that, given the wall-to-wall sunshine we were experiencing along with the route’s easy access, the rest of the world wanted to climb it too. This problem is ameliorated by getting up at the crack of dawn, and thus getting a head-start on the swarms of Germans, Austrians, Italians, French – oh yes, and Brits too – that have put an ascent of the Tridentina on the day’s itinerary. We didn’t do too badly getting up and away early, but on arrival at the car park, a throng of would-be climbers could be seen staggering around with half-tied harnesses and tripping over their Via Ferrata kits. This was clearly no time for a faff, and amazingly, I managed to get my harness on correctly first time.
The first section of the route is less than ten minutes’ walk from the car park, and was to be my introduction to “stempels”. Within our group, opinion seemed to be divided as to the merits of these staple-like hoops of iron, hammered into the rock like ladder-rungs at convenient intervals – I thought they were great, and everybody else hated them. This was no doubt a reflection of my own Via Ferrata philosophy, easily summarised thus: “If there’s a convenient cable or hulking great lump of iron within reach, grab it and hang on for dear life”. I liked stempels...
The stempel stairway led easily up a smooth slab and onto less steep ground, and then the route headed into a wet corner for the final part of this first section. This was the only part of the route with a noticeable amount of loose rock – overall the quality of the rock is top-class. A ten-minute stroll along a contouring path takes one to the start of the second and longest section. Although it was busy, I found this main section of the route a joy – climbing sun-warmed rock in relative safety, and with some sections that were remarkably exposed; this is exactly what I’d hoped Via Ferrata would be like.
By the end, I was feeling pretty knackered. I suspect my “grab hold of anything made of iron and heave up on it” approach wasn’t the most efficient. Lunch overlooking the bridge was followed by a round of drinks and apple strudel at a conveniently located hut – an appropriate reward for our efforts, and good preparation for the descent. There was some much easier Via Ferrata on the way down, and then for some, a reverse of the first part of the Tridentina route! I was all Ferrata’d out by this stage in the proceedings, and was quite content to scamper down the massive scree fan that led back to the car park, rather than put my Ferrata kit back on.
I can’t recommend this route highly enough to anyone reasonably agile who doesn’t suffer from vertigo. It was certainly the highlight of the week for me, and, despite discovering the existence of a fantastic long-distance path nearby (the Alta Via 2) – I think I could quite easily be tempted into digging out my Via Ferrata kit again sometime!
Paul
© Paul Filby - 2006
This article was originally written by Paul Filby for ‘Chunks’, the Newsletter of the International Munro Pineapple Society, and is reproduced here with kind permission of the former editor.
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